Orlando Takes Aim At Escorts

Regulations Would Help Police Combat Sex-for-money Businesses

Vice officers say they need more leverage to fight escort services -- many of which they say are just fronts for prostitutes who work Orlando's conventions and hotels.

The Orlando City Council plans to give police that leverage. It gave preliminary approval Monday to a strict new set of regulations meant to curb the sex-for-money trade.

Vice Detective Jason Batura said police hope the new regulations will give them the tools they need to combat a widespread enterprise.

"They work the conventions, and they're throughout all the hotels, city and countywide. They advertise in the phonebook [and] on the Internet,'' Batura said. "I couldn't say it's true for all of them, but there are a lot out there that are just fronts for prostitution."

The proposed regulations are patterned after those adopted by Orange County in 1996.

Since then, the regional Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation has successfully used that ordinance to target escort agencies both inside and outside the city. And the county law has helped MBI agents build racketeering cases against the owners of escort services.

City officers, meanwhile, have relied on state laws, which are tailored for street-level prostitution instead of high-dollar telephone and Internet escort services.

"The vice squad wants to work escort cases in the city when MBI isn't able to,'' city prosecutor Ken Hebert said.

Though the MBI has made high-profile escort-service arrests in the past several years, some still operate in Orlando and Orange County, apparently unhindered.

In Internet advertisements, one service offers private lingerie shows and body rubs at $250 an hour and says its models accept tips for "extras." The agency even accepts credit cards.

The new rules would outlaw such tips -- a provision aimed at removing the incentive for escorts to go too far.

Another provision would prohibit both escorts and customers from exposing themselves. City officials said that's meant to make it tougher for prostitutes to outsmart the police.

"Experienced escorts start asking undercover cops to take off their pants or show them their private parts so they know they're not cops," Hebert said. "This ordinance would make that a crime."